Sitting on the front porch in the summer…

I remember as a kid spending a lot of time sitting on the front porch in the summer. Nobody had air conditioning back then, so it was always cooler in the evenings on ‘the porch’. In my neighborhood all the porches were concrete with wrought iron railings so comfort wasn’t an option. Yet there we sat. I remember walking two doors down to sit on the Carlson’s porch with Otto & Bibs, so I could pet their dog Skipper. When I came home from the pool after dark on my bike, and rounded the corner from 179th Street onto Exchange the glow of my Dad’s cigarette told me the Cubs had a night game on the west coast. My Dad would sit on the porch with a plastic pastel colored insulated glass, a quart of Drewry’s ‘Big D’ Beer and his orange Sony transistor radio listening to the game. It was on those porches on warm summer nights that neighborhoods bonded and extended families were formed. We didn’t need someone to write a book (It Takes a Village) to tell us how to live our lives…
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